Ben's Talk3G Blog

When I realised that the last time I'd bought myself a new laptop was back in 2007 it occurred to me that I may be making my day to day life a little more difficult than it needed to be. With an Internet connection at home not capable of 'broadband' speeds, computing was always going to be a chore regardless of what it was done on. But since rectifying that significant bottleneck it quickly became clear that an upgrade was due.

I've always flip-flopped between ultraportables and powerhouses, never quite finding a combination of both that took care of all my needs. From a 5kg Dell to a minuscule Sony T2XP, to a 15" MacBook Pro to adopting an old MacBook Air, I've never quite 'had it all'. Recently, however, a little thing called a tablet has come along, and armed with an iPad 2 I now have an ultraportable without the duplication of trying to maintain two laptops. Time it is, then, for a powerhouse.

- Design

As powerhouses go, they don't come much thinner than the MacBook Pro. It's a little wider and deeper than the MacBook Pro's of old, but the current generation has that Apple thinness that makes you wonder a little just how they crammed so much inside. The main body, now famous for being milled from a single piece of aluminium, is incredibly solid with zero flex in any direction. No creaking here. This 'unibody' design has been, to some extent, copied by other manufacturers, but I'm not sure anyone has it quite this good. There's no internal chassis, it's basically an exoskeleton with all the mush inside attached directly to it. Oh, and talking of flex - this keyboard is rock solid, with great key feedback that leaves you in no doubt whether you've successfully hit a key. Typing on it is a dream.

One of the consequences of being of unadorned metal is the hostility of its edges. They're not really 'sharp' as I've heard some people call them (you can run a finger along at full pressure), but they're not comfortable either. I'm quickly noticing that I'm adjusting back into a proper typing position because of this, and less pressure on my wrists will only be a good thing, but coming from a MacBook Air that literally tapers right down to the desk you're working at it is, well, a sharp contrast.

There are no catches on the lid, which secures magnetically, and despite appearing deceptively thin due to its tapered edge it's actually reassuringly thick and sturdy, with a stiff, secure hinge mechanism and great amount of tilt. Housed within is a beautiful 1680 x 1050 display with excellent viewing angles, protected under glass which runs right on past the screen to encompass the bezel in an iMac fashion. Great colour, even backlighting without bleed, and this black and reasonably large bezel really allows for the contents of the screen to stand out, meaning the only distraction you're likely to encounter is reflections due to the naturally glossy nature of the display.

All the ports are down the left hand side, 2x USB 2.0, Magsafe, Gigabit Ethernet, SD card, headphones, mic, Thunderbolt. On the right, the CD slot and a lock hole. Having all the ports on the left means that some dongles will limit access to other ports, worth bearing in mind if your laptop spends most of its time with a load of stuff hanging off it. Mine doesn't. The only other design feature of note is the single piece glass trackpad, and I note it because, contrary to my previous misconceptions, not having a button and pressing (or tapping, as I enabled) wherever the hell you like is actually a great way to work when coupled with an OS that takes full advantage of multi-touch like OS X Lion.

When we come to weight, this is no Air at 2.54kg. It feels dense, but anything under 3kg is going to be relatively easy for most people to travel with, provided they're using an adequate case/bag. I've owned a smaller Sony Vaio in the past that was a full kilogram heavier... nasty.

- Specification

Apple have a limited number of build-to-order (BTO) options available on their online store, and as I often buy for longevity I tend to exploit this despite the sometimes 'exorbitant' cost. RAM and storage can be upgraded aftermarket, so that really comes down to a convenience and guarantee of compatibility argument, but CPU, GPU, and screen all need to be done at this stage if you're going to bother at all.

This is the top end BTO, so encompassing a 2.5GHz quad-core Intel i7 processor, 8GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM, 512GB SSD storage, Intel HD 3000 512MB integrated graphics combined with dedicated ones in the form of an AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 1GB DDR5, and the 1680 x 1050 screen. On the graphics front, the OS dynamically switches between integrated and discrete graphics depending on the requirements of the applications that are open. With just Safari open, for example, I'm using the integrated graphics, which in turn gives outstanding battery life. Should I choose to open a 3D game, the AMD chip powers up, giving that all-important performance boost. This works well, but note that some applications including Firefox make use of graphics libraries that result in the OS switching to the Radeon card, even the Twitter app currently, so you do have to bear this in mind.

Thunderbolt is, by all accounts, an exceptional way of extending the MacBook Pro and utilising its considerable power for external displays, storage, and more. But it remains a marginalised standard, and until it makes significant headway this feature is of more limited use than, say, a USB 3.0 port would be.

- Battery life

On a calibrated battery, using integrated graphics and brightness a notch from half, I'm at 81% with 8h 2m remaining. Yes, for light use this is a 10-hour battery, making Apple's 7-hour rating a very reasonable expectation under normal use. I often spend time in emails, browsing internal company web interfaces, or in Terminal, so this really is great for me. My old MacBook Pro ate a battery every two years, making me skeptical that sealed batteries could be the way forward, but spending time with the MacBook Air has taught me that Apple's 1000-cycle battery claims do indeed stand up to scrutiny. It should be 3-4 years before a MacBook Pro user experiences more than an 80% reduction in capacity provided the battery is treated well.

The Apple power adapter with Magsafe still leads the way. It's compact, with a cable wrap integrated into the (small) brick, and features both an extension cord and a plug attachment so the brick can sit directly on the power socket. Rated 85W, I didn't have any problems using the machine under load and maintaining a full battery. Using the tiny 45W adapters should also be fine for (slow) charging, but discharge may take place if power draw in active use is excessive, i.e. when gaming. Charging from empty to full only seemed to take a couple of hours on the 85W adapter, shooting up to 90% quickly and taking a little longer to finish the rest. This is usually how these modern types of battery charge, and is handy in that you can achieve a meaningful top up in a short space of time.

- OS

OS X Lion. Every iteration of the Mac operating system pioneered by Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer, later acquired by Apple and marking the return of Jobs to the company he created, generates controversy. For the first few iterations Apple concentrated on refining the basics of the OS, as they do with all of their products (hello Firewire iPod, iPhone 2G, iPad 1). This won them a lot of fans; I'll never forget seeing OS X Tiger 10.4 featured on BBC News and thinking... eh? The world uses Windows... why is this guy banging on about the Mac when no one uses them? Tiger, of course, was a massive success, and since this landmark release Apple has continued to add functionality to the basic core.

We're now at 10.7 and this marks the biggest changes in UI yet. Scrolling is inverted. Yes, that big glass trackpad is now treated like an iPhone screen, so moving two fingers down the pad moves the user up the page. It makes perfect sense; put two fingers on a piece of paper, look in a fixed position, and pull down. What happens? Your eyes move up the page. Believe me, bear with this change and after a few days you'll have a eureka moment. Please, please don't switch it off.

There are loads of gestures for doing pretty much everything. If anyone out there is still using alt+tab to manage their open windows then, for your own sake, go out and buy a Mac right this instant.

Most Mac users upgrade, so Lion is widely used now. There's just one aspect I want to mention, and that's performance. All my other Lion installations are upgrades, and they've all gone smoothly. However, I've been experiencing some browsing issues, that appear to be related to how the OS manages DNS lookups, and general performance is on a par with Snow Leopard (10.6). Even on my iMac, which has a surprisingly similar spec to this laptop, performance is great but not so in a sense that shocks you.

That's where this factory install of Lion on the MacBook Pro stands out. Blisteringly fast. Installing apps, blink and you've missed it. Everything. Just. Opens. Immediately. I can't get over the responsiveness. Just FYI, I can't imagine such performance would be possible without the upgrade to solid state storage, so I urge anyone considering a similar purchase to ensure they spec one. But I have other machines with SSDs that don't feel anywhere near this brisk, seriously, there's a risk of whiplash it's that jarring, and I'm considering doing clean installs on them all if there's a chance they could all perform like this.

- Conclusions

After quite a while with the MacBook Air, an ultraportable, it's safe to say that the MacBook Pro is some departure. But it's a departure in so many good ways. Where the Air is a lot of power in an incredibly tiny space, the Pro is an overwhelming powerhouse in, really, a pretty small space too. It has all the road-warrior benefits thanks to Apple's current battery tech and the use of integrated graphics, yet all the grunt on hand when it's needed. The size and quality of the screen, and performance of the keyboard, make for comfortable, practical all-day use, and Lion comes into its element as the epitome of the desktop OS.

Which really is how this experience feels. It's the epitome of a general purpose computer. It feels scarily like a 'what's next' moment, and I wonder if one day in the not too distant future we'll look back fondly on this generation of computers that gave us the power and freedom to create and do as we will, or see them as rather quaint and unnecessary relics of a time before the lines of what constitutes a computer became blurred beyond recognition.